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10 Key Clean Energy Statements From Obama’s Climate Speech

Obama spent a long time (rightfully so) setting the stage in his climate and energy speech by discussing the threats of global warming and climate change. But, on a hot and sunny summer day in DC, Obama also trumpeted a strong plan to use more clean energy. Here were 10 of his key statements about clean energy (imho):

US just doubled solar & wind electricity: “Over the past 4 years, we’ve doubled the electricity we generate from zero-carbon wind and solar power.”

Wind & solar power create a ton of jobs: “And that means jobs, jobs manufacturing the wind turbines that now generate enough electricity to power nearly 15 million homes, jobs installing the solar panels that now generate more than four times the power at less cost than just a few years ago.”

Republican governors helped Obama fight Republican congresspeople in order to keep wind power growing: “I know some Republicans in Washington dismiss these jobs, but those who do, need to call home, because 75% of all wind energy in this country is generated in Republican districts. And that may explain why last year, Republican governors in Kansas and Oklahoma and Iowa — Iowa, by the way, a state that harnessed — harnesses almost 25 percent of its electricity from the wind — helped us in the fight to extend tax credits for wind energy manufacturers and producers. Tens of thousands of good jobs were on the line, and those jobs were worth the fight.”

The clean energy race is on — where will the US place? “And countries like China and Germany are going all in in the race for clean energy. I believe Americans build things better than everybody else. I want America to win that race, but we can’t win it if we’re not in it.”

Let’s double our wind and solar power again! “[T]he plan I’m announcing today will help us double again our energy from wind and sun. Today, I’m directing the Interior Department to green-light enough private renewable energy capacity on public plans to power more than 6 million homes by 2020.”

Walmart is going all-in on clean energy… because it makes business sense: “Walmart is working to cut its carbon pollution by 20 percent and transition completely to renewable energy…. Walmart deserves a cheer for that. But think about it. Would the biggest company, the biggest retailer in America — would they really do that if it weren’t good for business, if it weren’t good for their shareholders? A low-carbon clean energy economy can be an engine of growth for decades to come. And I want America to build that engine. I want America to build that future right here in the United States of America.”

Our military is now going to install 3 GW of more renewable energy on its bases: “The Department of Defense, the biggest energy consumer in America, will install three gigawatts of renewable power on its bases, generating about the same amount of electricity each year as you’d get from burning 3 million tons of coal.”

Obama’s budget calls for cuts in oil tax breaks and increasing clean energy investment: “And because billions of your tax dollars continue to still subsidize some of the most profitable corporations in the history of the world, my budget once again calls for Congress to end the tax breaks for big oil companies and invest in the clean energy companies that will fuel our future.”

Energy efficiency also critical: “Now, the third way to reduce carbon pollution is to waste less energy in our cars, our homes, our businesses. The fuel standards we’ve set over the past few years — years mean that by the middle of the next decade, the cars and trucks we buy will go twice as far on a gallon of gas. That means you’ll have to fill up half as often. We’ll all reduce carbon pollution…. And meanwhile, the energy we use in our homes and our businesses and our factories, our schools, our hospitals — that’s responsible for about one-third of our greenhouse gases. The good news is simple upgrades don’t just cut that pollution; they put people to work, manufacturing and installing smarter lights and windows and sensors and appliances. And the savings show up in our electricity bills every month, forever. And that’s why we’ve set new energy standards for appliances like refrigerators and dishwashers. And today our businesses are building better ones that will also cut carbon pollution and cut consumers’ electricity bills by hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Federal government leading the way: “[T]oday I’m setting a new goal. Your federal government will consume 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources within the next seven years.”

Bonus:

So using less dirty energy, transitioning to cleaner sources of energy, wasting less energy through our economy is where we need to go. And this plan will get us there faster. But I want to be honest. This will not get us there overnight. The hard truth is carbon pollution has built up in our atmosphere for decades now. And even if we Americans do our part, the planet will slowly keep warming for some time to come.

The seas will slowly keep rising and storms will get more severe, based on the science. It’s like tapping the brakes of a car before you come to a complete stop and then can shift into reverse; it’s going to take time for carbon emissions to stabilize. So in the meantime, we’re going to need to get prepared. And that’s why this plan will also protect critical sectors of our economy and prepare the United States for the impacts of climate change that we cannot avoid.

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media.
You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.

If Green energy is so great why do you need the govt to pay for it, why not pay for it with all your cost savings. Its not Green Energy, its Greed Energy.

Bob_Wallace

Like other emerging technologies, it takes a while to bring prices down to where the new technology can compete with the old.

Wind is already our second cheapest way to bring new capacity on line and on the way to being the cheapest. Onshore wind will not need assistance much longer.

Solar prices are dropping very rapidly. That would not have happened with out government assistance. Solar in on track to be cheaper than natural gas in the next few years. It is already cheaper than gas peaker.

If you’re worried about your tax dollars being spent somewhere than isn’t benefiting you then look to coal, oil and nuclear. We’re throwing hundreds of billions of tax dollars into those rat holes and their prices keep rising.

Renewable/green energy has received only a tiny portion of what fossil fuel and nuclear have received and the cost of green energy keeps dropping.

Supporting green energy is a wise use of our tax dollars.

sheeplemakemesick

You are truly pathetic to delete a comment that you don’t agree with. Way to “defend” your comment. Commie

SouthernPatriot55

“I want America to build that future right here in the United States of America.”

Then why this from ABC News?
With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.

Bob_Wallace

So what do you have against the free market?

OutWest01503

I have nothing against the “free” market – but the “free” market isn’t free when US Taxpayers make a $529 million loan guarantee to the company. The US government should be investing out tax dollars in the US. If someone wants to build cars Finland – more power to them. Maybe the Finnish government will guarantee their loan, or maybe they could do it the old-fashioned way – without government help!

fred flurd

Contrary to popular belief, the process of manufacturing solar panels
can and does create enormous amounts of harmful and toxic waste. Because
the most of the solar panels consumed in the west are manufactured in
China, the nature and extent of this pollution is hidden from the
consumers of solar panels. We get the illusion of ‘green, clean energy’
on our shores, by exporting environmental ruin to the countries where
the panels are manufactured. Polysilicon manufacturing yields the
byproduct silicon tetrachloride, a highly dangerous and toxic chemical.
On September 19, in 2011, a village in eastern China rioted against a
local solar panel manufacturing firm for dumping harmful and toxic
chemicals into its river and poisoning the local fishing industry. In
2010, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition conducted a survey of
manufacturing and found that solar manufacturers were using lead (a
powerful neurotoxin), cadmium (a known carcinogen), and the greenhouse
gas nitrogen triflouride in the creation of their products.

fred flurd

It’s lying through omission, doubling this, millions of that. No where does it say wind and solar provide less than 3% of our energy and that will not change soon. 97+% comes mostly from fossil fuels (9% hydro the only practical renewable). Solar and wind would not exist economically without gov’t subsidies.

Bob_Wallace

If you’re talking about US electricity, 2012

Coal 37%

Natural gas 30%

Nuclear 19%

Hydro 7%

Non-hydro renewables 5%

Nuclear would not exist without government subsides. Many of our largest hydro facilities would not exist except for the fact that they were built with government money. Government money played a huge role in building the railroad system that transports coal. Fracking technology was developed with government money.

We’ve spent many, many times more money on fossil fuels and nuclear energy than we have on wind and solar.

Fossil fuels and nuclear keep on getting more expensive (except for the temporary downturn in NG prices).

Wind and solar prices just keep dropping.

Someone who understands investing would be able to instantly tell where our taxpayer dollars are working for us and where they aren’t.

Marc

I’ve always loved the thinking that the energy industry is against clean energy. This is like the ads for all the gizmo that tell you that the car companies the utilities companies don’t want you to know their secrets. Than on the other hand they castigate those companies for only being concerned with profits. If the energy industry can do it profitably they will they are all about profit!!!

The other is the environmental impact is unknown at the level will need to replace any of the fossil fuels or nuclear. There is no way that we can remove that much energy and not effect the environment.

Bob_Wallace

What energy are we going to remove from the environment with renewables?

We will bounce a little less light back out into space because of solar panels. Of course cutting our CO2 emissions would allow vastly more of the extra heat energy that’s harming us right now would be a good thing.

That’s a positive tradeoff.

Wind energy? The wind is going to bump into something and get transferred to heat. Shouldn’t matter if the something is a turbine blade or tree/building/mountain.

jessica

i think it also depends on where you live. because down here in southern ms it is always raining. so solar power sounds like a bad idea. i dont have the lights on during the day and just use the windows to save on power. and also it is so hot i do not want to rely on solar energy to keep my place cool. if they find the way to do it proper more power to them but now with the econmomy i dont see where the government can afford to spend the money on these kind of resources. it might be fine for some of you to spend more money for your electricity but the electric bills here are horrible with the cost of running an ac and i have kids to take care of. i cant afford my electric to go up. and getting rid of tax cuts for oil companies just seems like a bad idea. seems like gas is going to go up even more, i can scarcely afford it now. i drive a four cylender so i can save on gas even though it would be nice to have a faster car but with another child on the way i will have to get an suv because i wont be able to fit us all in the car. and not all of us can afford these hybrids from what i understand they are expensive. if they want to make us more environmental maybe they should not make the cars like that more expensive but i dont know much about cars so what do i know about it

mancavedude

people don’t know jack squat, everything you think you know is all bullshit

Lee Roy Miles

While the debate over “clean energy” continues, I might point out that they were dairy farming in Greenland a thousand years ago. I seriously doubt that the polar melt that allowed this was a result of industrial practices of the previous hundred years. The carbon dioxide myth stems from an analysis of the atmosphere of Venus, extrapolated through bad science to indicate that anything on earth could produce enough carbon dioxide to significantly affect global temperature. Beyond that, excess carbon has always been removed from the atmosphere by vegetation and diatom blooms (or where did you think those oil deposits came from?). Bear in mind as well that the US has served as a carbon sink for the rest of the world for a long long time; winds arriving on the west coast (the natural direction of global winds, a result of the earth’s rotation) carry a significantly higher percentage of carbon dioxide than the winds departing the east coast. We are not the problem (if one exists), we are the solution (if one is necessary).

John M.

Yes indeed, Wal-Mart leads in being a ‘green’ business. But the extra capital it cost to run a geen business iscoming out of their employees asses. Also their customers who are stuck with the “BigBlue” monopoly and pay more for poor quality and worse service, (no fault of overworked employees spread too thin). Going green is a hellova tax loophole too! Do little, rake in thetax cuts. The only green Wal-Mart cares about is THEY’RE GREEN!

Bob_Wallace

WalMart saves money by putting solar panels on the roofs of its buildings.

It treats it employees like crap because WalMart is owned by a bunch of greedy Republicans.

AuAgFinder

As I recall, for the many years when Mrs. Bill Clinton, democrat, Wife of the POTUS(horn-dog category), was on the Board of Directors of WalMart, she made a darn good living as one of the prime movers of the WalMart business strategy that is still in place today.

OutWest01503

Instead of making broad, unsupported claims, please list those greedy Republicans and what they’ve done to make them greedy. And while you’re at it, why do you list all the virtuous democratic supporting rich guys who work for AIG, Bears Stearn, and the other wall street firms.

Barbi

I’m sure this comment will get deleted because you delete comments that do not agree with your opinions that the climate is drastically changing. My question is this… what are you trying to save this earth for when Jesus clearly says in the Bible that He is going to create a new heaven and a new earth? You guys act like this world will go on forever and it must be preserved. If you believe that, then you don’t believe that Revelation will be fulfilled and that there is an end of this age. Listen more to Jesus, and less to these “brilliant” god-less scientists.

Bob_Wallace

I think Jesus, were he to come back, would kick our butts for messing up this planet.

Doesn’t your good book tell you that Adam was put on Earth to take care of it? Not being a biblical scholar I had to Google it…

“If God created it, doesn’t it follow that he would care for it? And
wouldn’t he want the people he created to inhabit it to care for it? In
fact, in Genesis 1 God said, “let us make humankind in our image,
according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of
the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over
all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that
creeps upon the earth” (New Revised Standard Version [NRSV], Genesis
1:26).

To have dominion means to be in charge of. Thus, God has
put us in charge of caring for his creation: earth, people, animals,
plants – all of it.

God is the ultimate environmentalist. He made it and he charged us with the stewardship of taking care of the earth.”

Sounds like you’ve got your marching orders. Better start cleaning this place up before inspection time….

Electric-Car Firm That Received Biden Visit and $118M in Stimulus Funds

Files for Bankruptcy
By Fred Lucas

January 26, 2012

(CNSNews.com) – Ener1–a company that manufactures batteries for
electric
cars, and that received $118.5 million in federal stimulus money,
and that
Vice President Joe Biden visited last year the day after President
Obama’s
State of the Union Address-announced today that it has filed for
Chapter 11
bankruptcy protection.

In last year’s State of the Union Address,
delivered Jan. 25, 2011,
President Obama set a national goal of having a
million electric vehicles on
the road in the United States by 2015-a goal
that would be achieved, Obama
said, by taking money out of the oil industry
and “investing” it in new
technology.

“With more research and
incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with
biofuels and become the
first country to have a million electric vehicles on
the road by 2015,” said
Obama.

“We need to get behind this innovation,” he said. “And to help pay
for it,
I’m asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we

currently give to oil companies. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re

doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy,

let’s invest in tomorrow’s.”

cricket23

“[T]oday I’m setting a new goal. Your federal government will consume 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources within the next seven years.”

Once again we are witness to the impact that Obama has when ever he opens his mouth: companies fail. It would be refreshing if he would shut his stupid mouth as he knows less about technology thn he does about being president.

Ronda

Oh, puhleeeeeeeeeeze! Have NONE OF YOU read the latest scientific evidence AGAINST global warming? What a bunch of nutcakes!

Rick Kuda

Opponents of clean energy, after having their “facts” corrected, often resort to whining about “ugly” turbines (I think they’re actually attractive, kinda like modern wind-mills) or doing some insincere song and dance about drilling for more oil to help our economy. They neglect to mention that 78% of the worlds oil is in the middle east, owned by dictators like the Saudis and no amount of sand or shale is gonna change that. If we don’t get off oil, some really horrible groups are going to OWN this planet in 50 years. That’s why I support electric cars, solar power, etc.. I could care less about climate change, humans need to colonize the solar system and give this tired old planet a rest, if Earth needs to become inhospitable for that to occur, it’s probably a good thing.

teridavisnewman

Global warming is bullshit. It doesn’t exist, and the idiots who are buying into it are beyond stupid. They’re the same morons who voted for Obama led by the MSM who, if they had done their job would have exposed the fact that the current “Leader” (what a joke) of the Free World used to spend his time in the gay bathhouses (Man’s Country) in Chicago trolling for cock.

gomurr

I am all for getting off fossil fuels and clean renewable energy sources, but get off the global warming. Global warming was an invention of the Club of Rome. It’s purpose is population reduction and redistribution of wealth (ours to them). The following is info is from bibliotecapleyades.net:

The Club of Rome’s 1972 publication The Limits To Growth was a Malthusian blueprint on how the human population needed to be reduced in order to prevent an ecological collapse, which in itself was merely a disguised version of the abhorrent eugenicist ideas that were circulating in the early part of the 20th century and eventually died out with Hitler.

Prominent members of the Club of Rome include Al Gore and Maurice Strong, both of whom are intimately involved with privately-owned carbon trading groups like the Chicago Climate Exchange, whose multi-million dollar profits are solely reliant on protecting the credibility of the man-made global warming thesis from skeptics who have challenged its legitimacy in light of the Climategate scandal.

On page 75 of their 1990 publication entitled The First Global Revolution, the organization outlined how they would manufacture ecological scares in order to manipulate the public into accepting the imposition of a dictatorial world government run by them.

“In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…

All these dangers are caused by human intervention… The real enemy, then, is humanity itself,” states the report, which can be read in full at the end of this article.

You can find all the proof you need to support this all over the internet if you care to do a little research. I find it hysterical that the people pushing this agenda have the biggest carbon footprints on the planet. Al “An Inconvenient Truth” Gore has 5 or 6 homes and flies around in a private plane. Then we have the Windsors, Rothchilds, Rockefellers, etc. who won’t be giving up any of their planes, hummers, homes, yachts, or jet-setting lifestyle. Kind of like Prince Carlos, founder of The World Wildlife Federation, caught on safari hunting endangered species.
Since the data doesn’t support global warming, it has subtly been changed to “climate change”. Part of this is the natural evolution of the planet. The biggest damage to our atmosphere has been the fluorocarbons from industrial waste (industries owned by the same dictators who want us all fitted with “smart meters”). China and India are the world’s most egregious polluters, but American citizens must pay because we are seen as “bottomless consumers”. If it wasn’t for America’s demands, the economies of both countries would be where they were 60 years ago. And for anyone who missed it, the average American can no longer afford to buy much of anything, not even food, if the number of people on food stamps is any indication. Any real “man-made climate change” has been perpetrated by our government and military in a quest to control the weather by bombarding our atmosphere with chemicals like aluminum and barium. Obama talks about wind and solar creating jobs, jobs, jobs. According to The Institute for Energy Research, 79% of Obama’s “green energy” stimulus grants went overseas, creating more manufacturing jobs out of country than in the US. $3.9B in stimulus went to 21 companies backed by firms with ties to 5 Obama staffers or advisors. Other large grants went to companies tied to large campaign donors, some of whom are now bankrupt, but not before corporate insiders made a killing on the stocks before they plummeted. Stimulus money was also spent to “strengthen” our domestic power grid. Some of this is in the form of “smart meters” which are only another part of their “Big Brother” agenda. By far, my favorite part of Obama’s speech is………” upgrades don’t just cut that pollution; they put people to work, manufacturing and installing smarter lights and windows and sensors and appliances. And the savings show up in our electricity bills every month, forever.” Does he really think we can all afford to install new “smart” lights, windows, and sensors, and buy newer, “smarter” appliances? Not to mention new cars. Does this joker live in the same country as the rest of us? The same planet? He and Biden talk about how much he’s improved the economy and “raised up” the middle class. Seriously? Our economy would have imploded by now if the criminal banksters weren’t propping it up with worthless paper. That cannot go on indefinitely. If they really wanted to help the world, DARPA would release the Tesla technology they have been using to wreak havoc and destruction instead of what Tesla intended it for; the betterment of humanity.

bubbinator

Odumba is such a liar, fraud and a criminal for his constutional violations that the lack of protest from the useless media and the growing more useless congress is pathetic. Egypt has a better system-let the military take over-Oh No-look what they did in Iraq and Afghanistan! US Military Generals are complete idiots-they spend 5Million on ugly uniforms for troops on some dumb ass generals chubby dream- it matched a gravel parking lot and got hundreds of our troops killed. US Officers are ticket-punching assholes with mostly no integrity. There are a limited few, not in power now.

AuAgFinder

Let’s get to the real crux of the “clean” energy debate. The whole Global Cooling-Global Warming-Climate Change is the fault of Mankind and his evil use of hydrocarbons. In the 70’s-80’s, “the science” stated that the earth was freezing, then the 90’s-00’s, Global Warming was “consensus”. Then when evidence for that got shaky, Climate Change became the words of the day. The beauty of that is you can cite any kind of weather as supportive of the theory. Hurricanes? Climate Change! Drought? Climate Change? Big snowstorm? Climate Change! Nice Day? Well, you know that’s bound to happen once in a while, even though we are in the midst of the worst Climate Change the world has ever seen. OF COURSE, the Climate is changing! IT HAS NEVER STOPPED CHANGING, AND IT NEVER WILL. The Historical record and physical evidence tells us that. Think of the Spartan battle of Thermopylae 2,300 years ago. It took place on the coast. If you go to that site now, it is several miles inland. Climate Change! No hydrocarbons! We know of many ancient cities that are underwater now. Were they built there? No! Climate change! No hydrocarbons! Many forts built on the water in the last 300 years are inland now(Ft. Taylor, for one). Climate change! No hydrocarbons!

Bob_Wallace

This is not a forum for idiots who don’t understand science.

AuAg Finder

Wow, I’ve never had a comment deleted before. Especially just for pointing out discrepancies in your argument. No foul language, purely logical arguments pointing out the fallacies of your arguments. Unfortunately, not unexpected from the “climate change” crowd. And by the way, I make a good living as a scientist. Nearly every day, I use chemistry, physics, earth science and meticulous observation to achieve my goal.

AuAg Finder

Put it back, Mr, Wallace. It’s not right to delete a comment just because you disagree with its content.

teridavisnewman

That would include YOU Bob. Global warming is a fraudulent premise and it’s being used to tax us to death in another government power grab.

Tony M

Lets use an OBAMA WORD…SOLYNDRA ….took 500 million dollars of our money,, knowing they were filing bankruptcy. Now the EPA has declared the plant an hazard zone for the toxic soup left for us to clean up,,while they wipe the 500 million clean..
Lets talk about the wonderful windmills that provide 1% of our needs, kill creatures and we are now finding out create other environment issues. They are not ZERO CARBON,,do you think they are (windmills/solar) are made from pixie dust? The author like all greeners are 100% liars and hypocrites. They wear poly sunglasses, drive their eco cars, while blogging on their Iphone and Ipad, while wearing the latest fashions allllll created from OIL,,,not windmills. Do you realize a worldwide critical shortage of Lithium? used in cells phone, laptops, and YESSSS your eco cars…the amount of lithium in your leaf, volt, prius car equates to thousands of cell phones. Is that mined by magical elves?
You try to advance your agruments based on ignorance and denial of the real truth. Now in CA,,they are outlawing the use of the ocean as cooling for nuclear plants..to force them to close…I hope you live the dark….light a candle…but at least with no nukes,,,,you can’t charge your damn iphones

gcooke777

WOW. LOL. Doubling the energy from Wind and solar! Now we can provide enough electricity to run TWO ceiling fans instead of one! Further we create jobs to build equipment (In CHINA!) that COSTS us money. Talk about a “make work” project!

The “clean race” in China? You mean the country that has the FASTEST growing CO2 footprint in the world? They CREATE CO2 to make products that WE BUY that cost US more money to make LESS ELECTRICITY so we can REDUCE CO2 and the NET CO2 is HIGHER?!? YOUR KIDDING!

Walmart going GREEN? You mean Walmart is doing PR! They get TAX CREDITS for it. Walmart saves money by using Green Technology because we TAXPAYERS subsidize it. SURE, if I ran Walmart and I “went green” and had the SAME power bill but also got 2 billion is TAXPAYER money I’d “go green” too!

John Galt

I wonder if anyone has bothered to look into how much “carbon pollution” it takes to produce a solar panel and if that panel can actually produce, over its lifetime (assuming nothing damages it during its lifetime), the amount of energy it took to create it in the first place. Not to mention all the heavy metal pollution those solar plants create. The problem that a lot of people obsessed with “green energy” is that they don’t realize that you can’t have something for nothing. Entropy… nuf said.

gcooke777

No no one will because its not politically correct. Here is something we DO know from the green meanies: Paper recycling. How is it done? Papaer is BLEACHED to get out the ink and the SLUDGE is dumped on open ground to “air dry” releasing TONS of ink and chemicals into the water and air. The paper is recycled and can make things like brown napkins, not virgin paper. This further takes a HUGE amount of hydrocarbon fuel to process the paper, much more than to make it from scratch. But we save trees, right? WRONG! Paper comes from TREE farms, not the forrest. When we recycle PAPER they samply plant LESS trees!

Score card?

1. Recycling paper uses MORE hydrocarbons than making new paper.

2. Recycling paper creates MORE pollution than throwing it away.

3. Recycling paper reduces the amout of trees not increasing them.

4. Recycling paper costs consumers of paper MORE money.

The lesson? Make recycling paper ILLEGAL to help the environment!

More bad news. The ONLY recycling that is GOOD for the environment is recycling metals. Glass, paper, plastic and EVERY other product recycled is PROVEN bad for the environment.

The lesson? Allowing “environmentalists” to make decisions about the “environment” is BAD for the environment. If you CARE about the environment there are a few GOOD solutions.

1. Conserve energy. Using LESS is one of the few ways to save the environment. Buy a GAS powered car that gets good mileage as hybrids use the same gas as regular cars but need batteries that are DIRTY to throw away and electric cars in REALTY use COAL and OIL to run (from power plants) that are dirtier than GAS.

2. Support nuclear energy as it is the cleanest form of power we currently have that actually DOES make cheap energy in useful amounts.

Silicon panels pay back the energy it takes to manufacture them in less than two years. Thin film solar panels have an energy payback of less than one year. Our oldest panels in service are about 40 years old. They’ve produced about 20x the energy it took to manufacture them.

The “heavy metal pollution” is well contained in the manufacturing process. Unlike coal, natural gas or uranium there no environmentally hazardous byproducts that invade our lives.

You can’t have something for nothing. That’s a fact. But with solar (and wind) you get a real large payback for what you spend.

The major greenhouse gas is NOT carbon dioxide. It is water vapor. CO2 is a minor contributor, and the amount produced by man is even less, much less than produced naturally. So how are you going to keep water vapor under control?

Bob_Wallace

I’d send you over to Skeptical Science to get straightened out, but I bet you wouldn’t go. So I’ll copy it over here for you. (More importantly, for anyone you might mislead with your claim.)

“When skeptics use this argument, they are trying to imply that an increase in CO2 isn’t a major problem. If CO2 isn’t as powerful as water vapor, which there’s already a lot of, adding a little more CO2
couldn’t be that bad, right? What this argument misses is the fact
that water vapor creates what scientists call a ‘positive feedback loop’ in the atmosphere — making any temperature changes larger than they would be otherwise.

How does this work? The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere
exists in direct relation to the temperature. If you increase the
temperature, more water evaporates and becomes vapor, and vice versa.

So when something else causes a temperature increase (such as extra CO2 from fossil fuels), more water evaporates. Then, since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, this additional water vapor causes the temperature to go up even further—a positive feedback.

How much does water vapor amplify CO2 warming? Studies show that water vapor feedback roughly doubles the amount of warming caused by CO2. So if there is a 1°C change caused by CO2, the water vapor will cause the temperature to go up another 1°C. When other feedback loops are included, the total warming from a potential 1°C change caused by CO2 is, in reality, as much as 3°C.

The other factor to consider is that water is evaporated from
the land and sea and falls as rain or snow all the time. Thus the
amount held in the atmosphereas water vapour varies greatly in just hours and days as result of the prevailing weather in any location. So even though water vapour is the greatest greenhouse gas, it is relatively short-lived. On the other hand, CO2 is removed from the air by natural geological-scale processes and these take a long time to work. Consequently CO2 stays in our atmosphere for years and even centuries. A small additional amount has a much more long-term effect.

So skeptics are right in saying that water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas. What they don’t mention is that the water vapor feedback loop actually makes temperature changes caused by CO2 even bigger.

Now, let’s take it a step further. We’ve got no way to reduce the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. But we can control the amount of CO2 that we add to the atmosphere.

The planet is warming. We are the cause. It’s because we have been burning enormous amounts of fossil fuel for over 100 years.

Bob_Wallace

I guess I should add, because we’ve warmed the atmosphere as much as we have by burning fossil fuels we’ve increased the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere by about 4%.

Those “100 year” and “500 year” floods and massive snowstorms that are happening more and more frequently? Burned carbon, baby, burned carbon….

AuAgFinder

You can see the impact of clean energy in the city I live in. There are miles and miles and miles of wind farms in west Texas and we are ramping all the way up to 1.5% of our energy needs from wind power! Spectacular results! Acres and acres of solar arrays will add another 1% on top of that! Meanwhile tens of thousands of birds are killed by windmills and the solar arrays can be seen from miles away because they are so bright. It looks like the sun fell to earth. The biggest solar array I’ve ever seen is right next to Harry Reid’s hometown of Searchlight, Nevada. No government subsidies there, I’m sure! As for jobs producing the windmills, most of them come from China, where they are allowed to have iron mines and factories. Also, the governments of Europe ans China are getting out of reliance on “clean” energy. The components they are building are shoddy parts made especially for the useful idiots in the USA. Thanks, Barry!

Bob_Wallace

Wind turbines kill very few birds. Would you like some data?

At one time we got less than 1% of our electricity from coal. Over time we built that up to a peak of 57%. (Thankfully we’re now down to 37% and falling.)

It will take time to convert our grid to renewables. It’s unlikely we can do the job in less than 20 years.

You are incorrect that Europe and China are cutting back on clean energy. In fact, they are installing wind and solar at accelerating rates.

You’re working with a whole bunch of flawed information. If you’re interested in learning what is actually happening in the world just let us know.

That’s a piece of junk you list to. The scientists who do bird kill studies are serious people and would not make the sort of mistakes that your linked paper suggests.

It’s the sort of junk that has people peeing their pants over wind turbine health damage and the mercury in CFLs.

Highest estimates are that in 2012 there were 573,000 birds killed by wind turbines. That number is an outlier which was published in March of this year and was not based on actual kill counts but on “assumptions”. It’s as much as 17x higher than research papers based on actual counts. We’ll have to wait a while to see how the scientific community treats that paper.

But let’s go with it. A bit over 1/2 million. Let’s err on the side that makes wind as bad as possible.

And let’s put it in perspective.

Domestic cats in the United States kill up to 3.7 billion birds each year. (6,457x wind)

OK, so now we know that wind farms are not one of our birds’ big problems. And we know that closing nuclear and coal plants and replacing them with wind farms would be better for the birds. Should we stop there?

No, we can make wind farms even safer for birds.

In 2009 there were 12.5 bird kills per MW installed wind capacity.

In 2012 there were 9.5 bird kills per MW installed wind capacity.

That’s a 24% decrease. A very major improvement in bird safety. And we aren’t done yet.

Tony M

Why then is every single DEMOCRAT fighting a wind farm off the coast of Cape cod? They have been for over 10 years…why? Because it will spoil the wonderful view from their multimillion dollar beach homes,,,and guess who leads the anti windmill charge….thats right the KENNEDY Clan…whose star “JOE” leads alternative energy groups….HYPOCRITE? You have both Pelosi and Feinstein fighting a solar farm in the CA desert,,you are simply amazing in both your ignorance,,and delusions.

cricket23

Thank you.

albaby2

But your assumptions are more accurate than others, correct? Research papers based on actual counts? Who paid for and who conducted the “research”?

Bob_Wallace

Yes, based on research. And let me repeat, the 573,000 number is the highest number estimate. Most scientists set the estimate far lower.

The research, as far as I know, is always done by trained biologists who know the problems of getting accurate counts. It’s an involved process which you might want to read up on.

Who paid varies from study to study. Why don’t you start with this Wiki page, give it a read, and then check some of the references at the bottom? I’ll bet you’ll find your answers.

AuAgFinder

Hmmm. it seems like 573,00 dead birds falls into the category of “tens of thousands”. I’m sure the “bird kill scientists” out there have no “Global Warming” agenda they are trying to promote. Recently, a very rare White-throated Needletail, was being watched by bird-watchers in Scotland just at the time it was sliced to nothing by a wind turbine. I’m sure that was an unusual instance and almost never happens when no watchers are around.

Bob_Wallace

Actually 573,000 dead birds falls into the category of hundreds of thousands of dead birds.

It is, however, significantly lower than the exaggerated claim of 39 million which is not based on science and field studies.

Do turbines kill birds? Of course they do.

Coal kills more birds per unit of electricity generated.

We don’t have “perfect”. We have to settle for “good” and then work to make good better.

AuAg Finder

I only said ” tens of thousands” because you said “very few birds are killed by turbines”. Then you changed your tune to 573,000, which certainly fits my description.

China and India are building a new coal plant every day. Lots of our coal is now going overseas to supply these plants. So Obama wants to further strangle this economy to lower our carbon, and we will still be getting the effects from overseas.

Obama is an ideologue who wants to put a bunch of strangling regulations on this country. He has done a lot of that already with the US in its fifth year of a recovery from recession with unemployment of 7.5 percent and GDP of 1-2%. This is a disgrace, and the worst recovery since the great depression. Obama lives high and mighty on our tax dollars while many in the country suffer living from paycheck to paycheck, and with Obamacare on the horizon, it will only get worse.

cricket23

“My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I

hope you’ll join with me, as we change it.”–

Barack Obama

albaby2

At one time we didn’t get any of our electrical energy from coal or have automobiles. What was your point, if any?

AuAgFinder

At one time, we weren’t able to warm or cool our houses or drive our personal cars wherever we darn well please. That’s the beauty of cheap energy. The freedom we enjoy today is the result of allowing free markets to develop cheap energy sources. Again, if solar and wind can compete on cost with hydrocarbons, then we will have them. Of course, we will all go down the toilet if we keep electing corruptocrats who artificially drive the cost of cheap energy sources up through regulation while simultaneously stealing our tax dollars to prop up non-competitive sources. We will pay dearly for that through unemployment, high costs for basic items, a lower and lower standard of living, and just general human misery.

Bob_Wallace

Suppose your granny gives you a car, your dad pays for your insurance and repairs and all you pay for is the gas.

Is the cost of driving that car only what you spend or the total of what you and your father spend?

Bob_Wallace

Would you answer my question, please?

AuAg Finder

Which question? Besides, you deleted my “global cooling-global warming- climate change post so no one would see it. You lost all reason for respect by doing that. Put it back.

Bob_Wallace

This question.

“Suppose your granny gives you a car, your dad pays for your insurance and repairs and all you pay for is the gas.

Is the cost of driving that car only what you spend or the total of what you and your father spend?”
—

This site is about how we get off fossil fuels and minimize climate change. It is not a soapbox for wacko postings from CC deniers.

If you want to engage in a reasoned discussion of how to cleanly power our future you’re welcome to participate.

If you want to go off topic and post crap you will be shown the door. Consider your “scientists predicted a frozen planet” as strike one. (And sometimes I forget whether the count is one or two and go straight to three.)

AuAg Finder

It’s the total cost of course.

Bob_Wallace

OK, good. We agree. The cost of driving the car is a total of your gas purchases and your father’s cost of insurance and repairs.

Now. The cost of electricity from burning coal. Is that only what you pay at the meter? Or does it include the money you pay in taxes and health insurance premiums to treat coal-pollution caused disease?

AuAg Finder

You are dreaming if you think a any portion of my health insurance premiums are due to coal-generated electricity. That would be an impossible statistic to calculate. Any calculation made would be full of assumptions that could not be verified.

Bob_Wallace

Your health insurance premiums are set high enough for your provider to cover expenses and earn them some profit.

Some of your fellow insureds are getting treated for coal-produced diseases. Asthma is a pretty common problem.

You and/or some of your fellow insured are going to the hospital for treatment. Hospitals treat a lot of uninsured people and never get paid for that treatment. Some of the people getting treated “for free” are coming with coal-produced problems.

Hospitals aren’t collecting from the uninsured so they’re jacking up the price they charge your health insurance company.

It’s not hard to calculate those sorts of costs. Your premiums are higher than they otherwise would be due to more of your fellow insured needing treatment and your company having to pay more for overall hospital care.

Hospitals are treating people for free. The people who own your health insurance company aren’t giving up their profits. That means that you are doing the paying.

Then there’s a whole level of health care we pay for via our taxes. Same thing. Coal is sending poor people in for treatment they wouldn’t otherwise need. That uses our tax money. And when we pay for any of the poor or service people or government employees to go to the hospital the higher hospital rates cost us more tax money.

There’s a great big price to burning coal that you never knew about. It makes the price of coal-electricity very expensive.

georgemarkos

Expert in climate change and the medical profession, too. Aren’t we lucky.

gcooke777

Bob,

Fortunately NG is on the rise and coal use dropping. Coal is on the way out slowly, we make money from selling it to China, and the environment is not saved as someone else simply burns it. I am not a climate change denier, I just still cannot truly grasp the total concept due to complexity. Here are my questions:

1. Can a climatologist have an opposing opinion and maintain credibility and grants? As virtually all climatologists on the opposing side have had their careers ruined (pawns of big oil) are we truly hearing any factual debate?

2. Are there any climate models that have to date demonstrated real accuracy in things like storm models etc?

3. As most climate models show the rise in temperature started substantially prior to any major hydrocarbon use increase and elevated temperature does cause an increase in ocean CO2 outgassing can we be positive CO2 is not “wagging the dog”?

4. As we are coming off a cool period (LIA) are current temperatures severely abnormal?

A 2000 year temperature graph variation goes as follows:

Year 0 AD: The same or lower than today.

Year 500AD: The same as today.

Year 1000 AD: Approximately 0.6 degrees C. Warmer than today

Year 1500 AD: Approximately 0.6 degrees C. cooler than today.

Year 2000 AD virtually identical to the previous 2000 year average.

See the works and writings of Loehle and McCulloch who gathered this data by removing tree rings from the equasion which made their graphs more closely match recent factual temperatures demonstrating greater likely historical accuracy. They contend that tree rings skew the data as they are subject to variations in rainfall, pests, and current health of forrests; not temperature as some other climatologists contend.

Even the data of those that are confident in anthroprogenic GW agree mainly that temperatures today have yet to be much different from temperatures present over the last millenium. We don’t need discuss the hockey stick, do we?

As to healthcare costs that is a very interesting arguement. According to many studies things that make people die younger actually decrease health costs. As everyone dies, and usually from protracted illness, things that shorten life actually decrease the lifetime cost of an individual. A study in the Netherlands demonstrates that a non smoker costs the system over 400K dollars over a lifetime and a smoker costs approximately 250K over a lifetime as they die younger and receive less healthcare in total. I am not advocating killing people to save money but if we are talking only about money it is more complicated than you contend.

Not to be to skeptical but would you seriously contend that actuarials would be honest in this regard? If we decrease CO2 world wide will they truly lower rates or simply find another excuse to raise them? Same with insurance companies increasing property insurance rates. Any excuse to charge more, regardless of actual impact, is a valid reason to them. When was the last time they lowered rates? When was the last time they didn’t make a profit? Insurance costs are based on profit and not actual truth.

3. You are misrepresenting the facts. CO2 emissions began rising before temperature. This warming period.

We have measured small human caused warming back a couple of thousand years due to human agriculture practices, mainly rice farming. The big temperature increases lag behind large scale fossil fuel consumption.

4. I’m not interested in arguing climate change with you. Take those arguments to Skeptical Science. You’ll find most of your questions already answered.

Having unnecessary illness which requires treatment between birth and death increases health costs.

—

A lot of the world has gone to single payer health care. They don’t get jerked around by insurance companies.

We’re going to try a competitive model and see if we can make it work. If it doesn’t then we’ll almost certainly go to single payer.

—

Take your planetary issues to Skeptical Science. They have very good explanations on line for you this very moment. You’ll be surprised to find that different planets have different orbits than does Earth. And that some are actually cooling which shoots a hole in the “extraterrestrial souce (sun)” stuff.

As do the direct measurements of solar strength. Skeptical Science is what you need. Go and learn.

I have no idea what you think you might be able to say about hurricane strength change with only two data points. Go read some climate science. There’s all kinds of good stuff on line.

gcooke777

I’m not going to debate AGW either. There is no point in debating politically “sponsored and paid for” young science. I am not denying it, I just find the explanations of those that espouse it like “the debate is over” to be incredulous. The debate will be over one day perhaps but not in our lifetimes. As nature makes 96.5% of CO2 and you and I are not a climatolgist where is the scientific answer we can arrive at logically?
I asked questions and made no statements. But with a background in physics I can tell you my understanding of planetary science is immense. My astrophysics teacher was Carl Sagan, who was yours? I can further say the accepted answer amoungst my friends, many published with PhD’s in astrophysics, is that Mars is getting warmer due to a combination of cosmic rays and solar output.
You ask if I am aware that different planets have differing orbits. Are you aware that earths orbit is constantly changing? Did you know that northern hemmisphere winters get longer every year and summers get shorter? Did you know that the poles have moved many kilometers in my lifetime? Are you aware that no planets are currently know to be cooling? Mercury unknown but Venus warming. Earth and Mars warming. Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Pluto (not even a planet) warming. Uranus unsure. 7 of 9 planets known to be warming and two with not enough data.
Don’t ask someone substantially more educated in science, both university as well as the field, to “go learn”. That is more than just condescending it is plain arrogance and unjustified ego. I suggest that you “go learn” as your facts are not just disputed but are provably innaccurate.

Bob_Wallace

Take it to Skeptical Science.

Either you or they are wrong. This is not the site for sorting out what Carl didn’t teach you.

gcooke777

Nor is it a site for saying coal costs over 1/3 of all healthcare. That is absurd.

And I’ll take the opinion of real scientists over those with an agenda anyday. Including Carl.

I’d bet more are coming in with tobacco, drug, alcohol or sexually transmitted disease problems.

David Richards

There is no single factor disease cause. May be a contributor but not a cause. That is like saying eating to much causes diabetes. Lots of fat people never get diabetes. Contributor not a cause. Inflammatory phraseology much?

AuAg Finder

Ahhh, now I see what you are doing. Of course, I did not say in the post you deleted “scientists predicted a frozen planet” anymore than you claim “the oceans will be boiling over” those are called exaggerations and are often used when someone does not have a reasoned rebuttal.

Bob_Wallace

Look, I’m going to assume you’ve bought into denier misinformation and let you slide for a little bit.

There were a very few papers that suggested the climate could be headed colder. They were a minority of the climate papers published at that time and they got no traction in the scientific community.

The real focus of the post you deleted was the evolution from calling it Global Warming to calling it Climate Change. Climate Change allows the hydrocarbon opponents to blame everything on hydrocarbons. Hurricanes, droughts, snowstorms, tornadoes, nice weather. You name it, hydrocarbons caused it. Believe it or not, we had all those things before 1900. We have no way of knowing whether a storm in 1220 or 1492 or 1560 was as severe as the storms we have now. Any suggestion the storms we have now are worse than we had 500 years ago is just made up. We do know that entire civilizations perished due to climate change. But guess what was lacking? Hydrocarbons. Of course climate is changing. It has always changed. To blame it on hydrocarbon use is wishful thinking.

Bob_Wallace

Actually the term “climate change” was in use before “global warming”. They don’t mean the same thing. Global warming is part of climate change, along with more severe winter storms, floods, droughts and other nasty things.

Climate change is driven by a number of things. CO2 is the biggie and it comes mostly from burning hydrocarbons. Methane is another serious greenhouse gas. Cattle burps, natural gas leaks, landfill off-gassing and melting methane hydrates are some of the sources.

Let me point out that you are simply chock-full of incorrect information. Why don’t you take some time, go over to Skeptical Science and get caught up? That would save me a lot of effort.

Your entire list of talking points is likely covered in the 174 “arguments” on the page I linked. There’s lots of good information, science and everything…

David Richards

“Climate change is driven by a number of things. CO2 is the biggie and it comes mostly from burning hydrocarbons.” There is no proof of this or a smoking gun or whatever you want to call it. It is an unproven theory. The Biggie that is a more important driver of atmospheric warming is water vapor(in the form of clouds) They determine how much of the suns energy is reflected back into space. Mans activities contribute around 3% of the carbon that is released into the atmosphere yearly, a negligible amount. Volcanoes dwarf human activity by a long shot. Temperatures have flat lined the last 15 years. The only “deniers” are the ones that believe in the Global Warming hoopla. They are denying what is actually happening. Meanwhile taking billions in government money for research that could be much better utilized on real problems.

David Richards

sorry meant .03%

AuAg Finder

David, they deleted your well-reasoned and lucid post. No doubt because it was “off-topic” because it dealt with global warming and climate change as mentioned in the first sentence of the article. I don’t know why they would post an article and then delete all references to the first topic in the article as being off-topic.

Bob_Wallace

This article has nothing to do with refusing to understand the science of climate.

This site is not an appropriate place to discuss the non-scientific beliefs of climate change deniers.

This site focuses on how we can cut our greenhouse gas emissions and minimize the amount of climate changed going forward.

If you would like to continue participating on this site then leave your non-scientific opinions for some other site.

AuAg Finder

I really think the alarmists should shift their focus to Volcano Prevention. The world would be much better off if they would do that.

AuAg Finder

Certainly the alarmists were not the first people to put the words “climate” and “change” together. However, public proponents of the issue, including ONero, Bill Maher, and other such bright lights, always apologize for saying “global warming” when they really wanted to say “climate change”. I’m sure among your friends you see a difference, but, in the public discourse, the average libtard out there believes climate change has replaced global warming as the demon to defeat.

http://greeniowaenergy.blogspot.com/ Green Iowa Energy

@AuAgFinder – Nay-sayers can argue all they want about global warming. It’s comparable to arguing that a drunk bus driver is going to kill every single person on the bus.
I say this because until it happens, there’s no proof that everyone would die. But what about the other drivers on the road? Ever think of that?
You may have a valid arguement about global warming. But you bring no mention as to whether Co2 and other pollutants are good for your health or not.
Even if Co2 has 0% affect on global warming it is still a huge factor in living organisms. For this reason we need to minimize harmful emissions.
Clean energy, energy efficiency, and lowered carbon emissions are the only way to do it.
So since your not going to convince anyone that Co2 is good for the planet, your arguement is invalid.
Good day.

AuAgFinder

As has been pointed out on this board previously, 96.5% of CO2 in the atmosphere comes from natural sources – Plant respiration, Volcanoes, etc. I have no argument with reducing CO2, but not at the expense of trillions of dollars, the confiscation of freedom of mobility(especially for economically disadvantaged), excessive government control of basic necessities, and the human misery all those things bring.

AuAg Finder

Off topic? The first sentence of the article above says it is a discussion of “global warming and climate change” So how could a discussion of those items be “off topic”?

Pete

Remember, the numbers didn’t support global warming which was made up from day one to make people money from the fear factor. They now call it Climate Change. Because the climate is always changing according to the sun activity and the effects it has on the earth not to mention the earths own shifting of plates and activity they can surely prove climate change. This is nothing more then the historic and continuing norm of our planet and it’s weather. Primary purpose of the Climate change culture, to take money out of various countries and shift it around to others. It is and always has been about the almighty dollar.

gcooke777

The cost of operating a car includes all expenses, no matter who pays them. Costs you need to include in Wind Turbine Power:
1. Conventional plants running at lower efficiency on “standy” while waiting for more wind power which is variable. This is a very substantial cost often estimated to be between 2 and 3 cents per KWH.
2. All costs of building the wind farm including Federal subsidies.
3. All costs of putting up the infrastruture including but not limited to power lines to the farm and connecting the farm to the grid.
4. Life span of Turbines at this point generously said to be 30 years and their replacement and repair.
5. As “close to grid sites” for wind farms are diminishing rapidly the additional cost of the longer power lines, power loss over longer transmission distances, and environmental damage of those longer lines. Also additional costs to maintain the farm once they are more remote.
I would require any form of power from solar to coal to meet that same criteria or the costs are innaccurate.

Bob_Wallace

1. All generation requires standby and backup. Wind and solar are much easier to deal with on the grid because the tend to fade in and out, they are distributed over wider ranges making sudden changes unlikely and they are changes are predictable.

The big headache for grid operators is having a large coal or nuclear plant abruptly go off line.

2. All energy is subsidized. Fossil fuels and nuclear energy have received massively more subsidy than have wind and solar. The difference is very extreme.

Need data?

3. Total LCOE. Look it up.

4. First gen turbines had about a 30 year lifespan. It’s not unreasonable to assume that modern tech would last longer.

In addition, some wind farms are starting to take down 15 to 20 year old turbines and replace them with taller, larger swept area turbines. That way they get more energy out of the same real estate.

The removed turbines are being reconditioned and sold to less developed countries which have less capital for installing wind and their best wind areas are not crowded. If a 20 year turbine gets its moving parts (bearings, etc.) replaced I can’t see why it would give another good 20 years of service.

The reactors which came on line and were shut down after only a short time in service.

The 20+ GW of pump-up hydro and CAES storage we built in order to shift unneeded off-peak nuclear into peak hours.

We could even include the extra security costs of those “targets” and having jet fighters on standby in the event that a large plane “goes off course”.

And we have to back up and provide standby for each and every one of those coal and nuclear plants just like we have to backup wind and solar.

gcooke777

Dear Bob,

Total cost of US healthcare anually 1 trillion dollars. 1 billion daily costs for “coal disease” would be 365 billion annually if you are correct. In other words all your statistics are now “wrong” (lies) as everyone knows it is impossible for coal to be the cause of 36.5% of all health care in the US.

I was being nice as I was under the impression you were simply uninformed or perhaps overly enthusiastic about your industry but now you have clearly acted dishonestly.

Here is a fact:

Wind Turbine power costs 15 cents a kilowatt. Besides solar it is the most expensive power sourse on the planet. You count costs against fossil fuels that simply don’t exist or are wildly exagerated and have very poor math skills when it comes to your personal favorites.

1. Big power plants rarely go offline abruptly. They are typically scheduled. Wind power is dramatically more unstable in that regard and is the big headache according to electric companies.
2. Wind receives 92 percent of actual subsidies. Big oil 8%.
3. Same point.
4. All the reconditioned and resales were already put into my figures of costs. Nothing new there.
There is no conspiracy against Wind Power or Solar power. They just currently are very cost prohibitive as facts bear out. I’m sorry that you went down the route of political correctness and disinformation to prove your point.

The partially built and abandoned reactors are from environmental and political sources, something “wind and solar” don’t have to deal with as much. Our current CO2 output would be lower if uneducated and poorly informed environmentalists would have stopped the illogical campaigns.

Actual annual “big oil subsidies” not imagined ones for political reasons are 8% of annual wind farm subsidies. You guys get 92% of the money and make less than 5% of the power. Tax breaks for “big oil” that are identical to your tax breaks (as well as for Apple corporation) are not real. Helping poor people with electric bills and not charging farmers gas tax for road repairs (combines don’t wear out roads they can’t drive on) makes up half of the subsidies to which you refer.
Power plants typically run at high efficiecy and complete shut downs rare. As they comprise the largest current part of the grid there is little cost for them being on standby for each other as it is planned so as to keep the grid efficient. Wind speed cannot be “planned”. As Wind farms have a huge and uncontrollable variation (rarely even running at 50% capacity) they are much more problematic to handle for power suppliers. The “gentle” slow downs you refer to happen any time the wind changes speed. That is a daily occurance, not a yearly one as conventional plant issues.

Large scale thermal plant outages are much more difficult for grid management than a single turbine in farm of dozens needing maintenance or a solar panel with some bird poop to be cleaned off.

gcooke777

One fact at a time for simplicity. Do you really submit that 36.5 percent of healthcare costs in America come from coal as you stated?

Bob_Wallace

The billion per day may have been a combination of health and environmental damage. Read the paper and find out.

gcooke777

May have been? Those figures you throw around are impossible Either was coal, filthy and stupid as we both agree it is, does not cost a billion a day by any stretch of the imagination. If you are interested in actual cost of petroleum vs. alternative energy subsidies read this:

Let me rephrase. The external costs of burning coal due to health and environmental damage add around a billion dollars a day to the cost of using coal for electricity.

While many believe coal to be a cheap source of electricity it is, in fact, our most expensive. PV solar is already cheaper than coal generation.

(You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t read stuff published by Steve Forbes or Rupert Murdock.)

gcooke777

Shame. I read CNN and MSNBC. You just need to be a good editor. And btw I think coal is a very poor choice for power and the reduction of it’s use on the grid backs that up. I say that regardless of what people in WV think of me. It’s dirty, mining deadly, and frought with illness (black lung). At this point I like NG most due to the fact plant location is easlier than wind, it can be portable with less vehicle modification, and as Americans don’t want hybrids and electric cars on the whole it provides a unique transportation advantage to the environment.

Bob_Wallace

” Americans don’t want hybrids and electric cars on the whole”

Americans didn’t want to give up their typewriters or their film cameras.

Then they did.

There are zero advantages to NG except for temporary greater range. EVs will almost certainly gain plenty of range. ~180 miles is adequate.

NG is simply a distraction.

gcooke777

Unless we look at all forms of energy both in terms of power plants and portability for transportation we are doing ourselves a disservice. Energy is a huge puzzle with many pieces. I am not in favor of ignoring any of those pieces at this time. Especially those that show the most progress in recent years like NG. We have found ways to get a lot of it cheaply and its way better than what we have now. I don’t call that a distraction. I call that an important source of energy that is cleaner than what we now have until it too is replaced. EV’s are great for city dwellers but don’t help my daily 216 mile commute between Naples and Sebring Fl.
I gave up my camera and my typewriter eons ago. Because the newer version was better and cheaper and more useful than the older version. People will not give up cars until gas costs 10 dollars a gallon or EV’s provide something better and easier to use and there is a cost savings. American’s want it all and EV’s currently don’t compete. And PS even when EV’s are useful to me I’m not selling my Porsche. I’m very attached to it! The EV will be my “other” vehicle!

Patrick Mumford

180 miles is adequate? For whom? Don’t assume what you believe to be adequate is for the rest of the world. gcooke777 I am impressed by your knowledge about power, thank you for the information.

Bob_Wallace

180 miles is adequate for most drivers.

Most drivers do not drive more than 180 miles per day. In fact, I’d be surprised if 1% do.

Most of us drive under 50 miles a day. And we take a few long trips a year. With 180 mile range and <20 minute, 90% rapid charging a driver can put in a 500 mile day with only two moderate length stops. (180 + 160 + 160 = 500 miles.)

When you stop to charge you can eat, pee, walk your dog, check your messages, catch a nap. Stuff you can't do when you're pumping gas.

If you do a 500 mile drive in a gasmobile you're almost certain to stop once for fuel and once for food. Two stops, perhaps the fuel stop is half as long as a charge stop, but if you're saving $1k to $2k a year on gasoline costs few people are going to complain.

~180 is what I view as the "threshold of acceptability" for EVs. I suspect over time our ranges will increase, but 180 will be good enough for people to start switching to EVs in large numbers.

Joshua Sennett

The problem with EV’s is that power has to be generated by something… Right now that something is a power plant that is producing more CO per Kwh than a traditional gas vehicle would be… I am all about EV’s and see a great possibility for their future, but don’t kid yourself into thinking it is any healthier for the environment. The deep cell batteries have to be replaced every Five years (?) and are considered hazardous waste with only a few parts within those cells fully recyclable…

Bob_Wallace

Studies have shown that were an EV charged with 100% coal produced electricity it would result in slightly more CO2 than a gasmobile.

But since none of our grids are 100% coal EVs are cleaner than gasmobiles. Even in the states that burn the highest amounts of coal EVs are cleaner than burning gas.

With every wind turbine and solar panel we connect to the grid EVs get cleaner.

—

Better to think of battery life in terms of miles rather than years. Our longest “in service” batteries are in the Tesla Roadster and they are doing well at 100,000 miles.

For the average 13,000 miles per year US driver that would be about 8 years. And “used up” for an EV battery really means that range has dropped to 80% of when the battery was new.

When lithium batteries hit 80% they tend to lose further capacity slowly. Someone who buys an 80 mile range EV and has a 40 mile or less daily driving routine may never need to replace their battery.

BYD’s lithium iron phosphate batteries are going strong at 150,000 miles. And that’s with close to 100% rapid charging. They are being used in taxis that stay on the road 24 hours a day.

Lithium batteries are recyclable and Toyota already has recycling in place.

albaby2

Coal fired generating units are being shut down because of government interference by the EPA, it is not the producers choice.. You-and I- and industry- will pay the cost of alternative energy. Solar, wind power and Ethanol are highly subsidized and usage is mandated not by the market-but by our all encompassing government. We will the price thru higher energy costs, less reliability, and loss of jobs to countries that have lower energy costs the same way we lost jobs to those countries with lower labor costs.
As for not wanting hybrids-look around you and look at the Prius’s and other hybrids. I drive a Prius and I didn’t buy it because of government pressure, but because I was curious and wanted to see how it worked and drive a lot.. It was not subsided and was priced way below the Volt. At times I get better than EPA estimates, burn regular fuel and have no range limitations to get my 50 MPG avg.

gcooke777

So you didn’t get the tax break like everyone else that bought one? And I’m with you except I see the need to replace coal as it is filthy and dangerous with NG as it is clean and cheaper. I don’t see why the death of coal means sun and wind except for misguided government.
My desire? Buy any car you want and try and save as much money on gas as you can. Get rid of expensive power and use the cheapest and cleanest possible with cheap being of more import than clean.

albaby2

There is no tax rebate on a Prius. Natural gas is not clean and is still a hydrocarbon.

mancavedude

cnn and msnbc? wow you really are misinformed

cricket23

You related to Obama?

Joshua Sennett

So, you get to cherry pick your sources? Science and editors get to do that? Oh, wait, their opinions are (Assumidly) different than yous, so you get to ignore any evidence that they might possess to back up their opinions yet get to critisize those that haven’t read what you have to offer… great… sounds intelligent.

Bob_Wallace

I select what I feel to be the most reliable sources of information as I form my opinions.

If you have information that you feel is more reliable then present it.

(By the way, I’m not the one down-rating you. Just in case you wondered.)

gcooke777

Nor would I down rate you. I am interested in truth. Im sure many here have an agenda on both sides. I do not. Those with chosen sides make judgements based on preconceived notions. I accept what I see here and then attempt to verify it without going to “green” sites or “oil company propaganda” sites. Thats difficult with so much internet trash to forrage through. I would down rate any comment that starts a personal attack. Not responds to one in a negative fashion, but one that starts it in the first place.

You are using environmental degridation for Coal and Nuclear, what about the damage done by installing acres of wind turbines and solar panels…

Bob_Wallace

The “footprint” of wind is quite small compared to that of coal and nuclear.

There’s no appreciable environmental damage created by wind turbines. There are minor changes in wind speed and ground moisture in the immediate vicinity of the turbine but it is extremely minor compared to the damage caused by coal, coal mining, and uranium extraction.

Per MWh of electricity produced bird kills are very much higher for coal and nuclear than for wind.

cricket23

Obama’s New Energy Policy: More Drilling… in Brazil?

This may come as a
shock to some people, but Barack Obama really does have
an energy plan. Yep.
For all of you who thought that he was clueless… who
thought that as oil
prices continue to rise and as conflicts in the Middle
East continue to
escalate that our president should be coming up with a plan
to decrease our
dependency on foreign oil, think again. He does have a plan.
In a speech on
his South American tour, Obama said the U.S. will help
develop Brazil’s
offshore drilling so that America can buy the oil! Can we
PLEASE have an
early election?

If this is about true reducing our carbon footprint then we need to be realistic and not idealistic. The fact of the matter is that wind and solar will NEVER be able to produce more than 20% of our power (unless of course we develop room temperature superconductors). Why? its simple, the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. If you are ready to live in a country where the power is on sometimes but not predictably (like some places in south America, Asia and Africa) then bank on Solar and Wind. This is a physical fact you cannot change, unless you can stop the earth from spinning, but that would cause other problems. You also ignore, like most ‘progressive’ people in this argument the ‘law of unintended consequences’. For example, an unintended consequence of burning coal is high CO2 emissions. We did not understand that for the 100 years or so we’ve been burning coal. If you think that wind power doesn’t have unintended consequences that we don’t yet understand then you are naive. We are already starting to see some. For example, ranchers that have leased their grazing land to wind farms and finding that the grass doesn’t grow well down-wind from the farms because the turbines dry the air out reducing their ability to grow crops and graze livestock. I don’t know about you, but I like to eat so this is troublesome. I’m not a climatologist, but I am an engineer and I understand the ‘law of conservation of energy’ which states that perpetual motion cannot exist. In layman terms this means the ‘renewable energy’ is impossible, and cannot exist. If you take energy from the wind, you are removing energy from our weather systems. What effect will that have on our weather? What climate change will that cause? To argue that our weather systems on this planet are so huge that we couldn’t possibly effect them is preposterous if you accept that our production of CO2 is adversely effecting our weather systems. Let me conclude: We need reliable sustainable energy that runs 24/7/365. Solar can’t do that, wind can’t do that, both together can’t do that. We need better answers. We have many. Nuclear is one, and before you go off on how dangerous nuclear is, do some real research. Modern nuclear designs are very safe. Old nuclear designs are less safe. We have almost no modern nuclear power plants thanks to public hysteria. We have 100’s of modern military and scientific nuclear power plants that are very safe. When was the last time you heard of a modern nuclear reactor ‘melting down’? That’s right, you haven’t. We only hear about very old reactors having problems. We need to have an open, honest conversation about ‘clean energy’ without the media hysteria. No system is perfect, all can cause death and harm (including solar and wind) we must do our best to use what we can in as safe a mannner possible.

Bob_Wallace

You fall off the dock before you get to the end of your second sentence.

Multiple studies have found that the US grid could be 40% wind and solar without making any additions or adjustments to the grid. We have sufficient storage and dispatchable generation to permit that much variable generation.

From there on you swim further and further into the weeds of failure….

sunshineman99

Frankly Bob, your immediate adoption of name calling causes me to question your credibility. I think you should do some more research before calling people names. First: The US generates about 3.5% of its energy from wind and less than 1% from solar. Best estimates are that we generate about 4.3-4.7%% from those methods combined (April 2013). Don’t take my word for it, although my master’s degree in electrical engineering should give me at least some credibility, spend 5 minutes and google it. You will find that we can’t reach even 20% from these sources without storage methods THAT WE DON’T HAVE YET. Yes, there are some promising storage technologies out there but they aren’t production ready. Let me simplify my argument into a few sentences: 1) I believe that Wind power has unintended environment consequences that we haven’t even begun to understand. 2) Solar is still too expensive and inefficient to help much and hasn’t significantly improved in the past 30 years (i.e. its gone from 3% efficient to 18% on average, the best being about 20%). 3) Our Grid is no where near ready to support long range transmission of power generated with wind and solar 4) Wind and solar require storage technology that we simply don’t have yet. 5) We need energy independence now, and have the ability to achieve it with existing, proven technologies that are environmentally safe, like modern nuclear. I believe that over the next few years, most environmentalists, like myself, will come to the conclusion that Solar and Wind can only be 20% of the solution. We still need 90% more (accounting for growth). Nuclear is a good one. It has come a long way in the last 70 years. It is worth discussing and investigating. Until people do the proper due diligence and move beyond the emotional hype, I and a few like me will continue to be called names on forums like this. All I ask is that people turn off the TV, turn on their reading lamps (figuratively speaking) and investigate for themselves the options that are available to us.

Bob_Wallace

If I called you a name, then I apologize. I was having a bad week thanks to spammers and trolls and I allowed myself to say what I was thinking, which is not always a good thing to do.

Now, let’s look at your claims, shall we?

Yes, in 2012 about 3.5% from wind and 0.1% from solar. I don’t need to take your word for it. I’ve downloaded generation numbers from the EIA.

Do you know that at one time we got 0% of our electricity from coal but over time coal grew to 57% of our generation? Do you realize that took years?
—

Now, I don’t know if your masters degree outweigh the Ph.D.s at the NREL, but here’s what they found…

“The integration of 35% wind and solar energy into the electric power system will not require extensive infrastructure if changes are made to operational practices.”

That number will rise as we convert more of our thermal generation from coal to natural gas.
—

Eos System zinc-air batteries are being manufactured, have undergone their initial testing on grids around the world, and will be installed in volume over the next few months.
—

Solar is now being installed in the US at about 10 cents per kWh. That’s a no-subsidy price. And is cheaper than new coal, old coal, new nuclear and gas peaker electricity.

Solar is being installed in Europe at prices which would make solar competitive with combined cycle natural gas generation after gas rises just a bit more.

Recently the UK installed solar at $1.59/watt. Solar at that price in the sunny US Southwest would produce electricity at 7 cents/kWh.

The median price of onshore wind in the US is 6 cents/kWh.

The median price of combined cycle natural gas in the US is 5 cents/kWh. That includes no charge for the environmental damage caused by carbon releases.

And here’s something interesting about wind and solar. After the 20 year payoff period typically used in LCOE calculations those wind turbines will produce electricity for almost 0 cents/kWh for 1, 2, 3 or more decades. The CCNG plants will continue to have fuel costs.

—

The efficiency of installed solar panels has greatly increased in the past 30 years. That statement by you goes past simply wrong to ridiculous.
—

We will need to add some transmission for wind. And we are. We have recently built HVDC transmission to bring Texas Panhandle wind north and we are building HVDC lines in the Midwest as well as to bring Wyoming wind to the Pacific Coast. I’m not sure what that has with anything in particular. Any new generation would require new transmission.
—

I dealt with storage above. Just taking your claims in order.
—

Ignorance is curable. Catch up with the real world. If you actually have a masters degree then you should be capable of reading information freely available on line.

Why don’t you actually investigate nuclear? Find out how much it costs to build a new reactor. Calculate what the price of electricity would without massive taxpayer subsidies. Determine the siting and availability of cooling water issues.

So much to learn. Get busy.

Pete

Gee, you even changed from calling it global warming to climate change. Those that can think for themselves realize this is because you couldn’t prove or maintain the myth of global warming so you had to go with climate change.

SouthernPatriot55

Tsk tsk, so much for tolerance!

Joshua Sennett

… But scientists did predict a frozen planet… they were wrong, but they did…

Bob_Wallace

Actually, a small number of papers were written that predicted a cooling planet. The large majority predicted a warming planet.

It is the case that papers are published frequently which are flawed.

It is also the case that sometimes a scientist will put the known facts together in a way that makes a prediction and then further research will show that their prediction is wrong.

If you go back through the history of any scientific topic you will find faulty papers. That’s just how science works, people put out their ideas and then other scientists confirm or disprove those ideas.

Science is self-correcting which is why it emerged as the dominate branch of philosophy.

cricket23

After you post a link to your comments.

Waiting.

Joshua Sennett

Bob… as a percentage of energy created by wind power (Remember percentage of power created, not total numbers) Wind turbines are deadlier than coal… China and Japan are accelerating their Solar and Wind resources, but they are accelerating their fossil fuels at about ten times the rate, so for every solar panel or windmill built, they are investing in oil/coal and natural gas exploration and exploitation at ten times the amount.

Bob_Wallace

Joshua, I have no idea who told you that but it is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

China is capping their coal use starting in 2015 at 2011 levels. That means that starting in 2015 they will burn 6% less coal than they did in 2012. China’s coal acceleration is over. Any coal plants they are building now are replacing inefficient ones so that they can get more electricity out of the coal they do burn.

Japan increased their level of coal burning following Fukushima which caused them to shut all their nuclear plants.

Japan is considering building more coal plants. That decision has not been made. At the same time Japan is increasing solar and wind installations. Japan has no desire to increase their CO2 emissions. I expect few, if any, coal plants are actually built.

cricket23

Link??

SouthernPatriot55

Too BAD one it killed was a BALD EAGLE. Of course this administration did not go after the company.

suz

He speaks the truth Bob. Check out the web your the one getting flawed information . You must be on Obama’s payroll

Darren Fisher

That’s your argument. Renewable energy kills birds and solar panels can been seen from a distance. So lets compare. How many birds, fish and wildlife died during all those oil spills? How many people died from the train carrying oil accident that just happened? How many people died in the wars over oil? How many people died during the BP oil rig explosion and the subsequent damage caused by the gushing of MILLIONS of barrels of oil into the ocean?

Jobs from oil? the keystone pipeline will employ 6,000 workers to complete and then 35 permanent maintenance jobs. Why would we not put all of our resources into advancing renewable energy. The Sun and Wind are free. FREE. This is just basic common sense. No more people getting lung disease from digging for coal. No more wars and death over oil. No more smog alerts in big cities. Sun energy and Wind energy will be our future. So either get on board or get out of our way, because you cant stop progress.

Bob gave you a very eloquent explanation based on FACTS and unfortunately you are unable to comprehend it. Stop getting your information from Faux news and Rush.

Oh and “windmills” is not the correct term. They are called Wind Turbines” and 1 Turbine can power 500 homes.

gcooke777

By your logic oil is ALSO free and so is nuclear power. After all, just like wind, all you have to do to get oil is pump it out of the ground? How are wind turbines MADE IN CHINA free??? How are Solar cells ALSO made in China free? Nothing is FREE Darren. Just free if you LIKE it and expensive if you DON’T. I would LOVE free or cheap energy, who WOULDN’T? But your “free” energy is SO not free. I’d explain the details as I am a scientist with a degree in Physics from an Ivy League University, but you won’t change your mind. For those with open minds here goes:

Wind power must be placed in VERY specific places to work. Remember WIND turbines need WIND. Those places are virtually ALL in environmentally sensitive areas that will need a lot of infrastructure (Power Lines) to bring that energy to a place where people are. The local wildlife be damned. Expensive turbines, remote locations, large infrastructure, expensive to maintain… Free? I’m sorry but your logic is very skewed by your belief system. By the time you harvest your “free” power the turbine needs to be replaced. How much oil and gas will be used in creating your wind farm? Building your turbines? Installing your infrastructure? Holding funerals for your bird population? (just a joke there).

IF your wind farms really worked then why did known lefty Ted Kennedy squelch them? Why are not the evil American corporations building them to run their factories and farms? Why? Because in TRUTH they don’t work. They call it “alternative energy” because it doesn’t WORK. If it DID work we would call it MAINSTREAM energy. Profit mongers would build them by the MILLIONS if it saved the company money. The only way they “work” is when the guys that build them STEAL my money in the form of tax subsidies to make them APPEAR efficient when the truth is otherwise.

Cheap energy is reigned to your GRANDCHILDREN when real scientist not pseudoscientists find new and exciting forms of energy from discovering the nature of gravity, the nature of atoms, and energy unification. As it sits right now green energy is snake oil and perpetual motion. A carnival sideshow to entertain the masses and steal some “green” cash. Not all green energy people are charlatons though. Some are just poorly educated or poorly informed well meaning dullards. Thats why I’m here. To point out the truth.

PS I’ don’t work for ANY oil company or energy company. I currently work for HOSPITALS and have no skin in the game, NEVER did, so don’t even think about pulling a Sherwood Idso on me!

AuAgFinder

Excellent points all around, Mr./Ms. Cooke.

Bob_Wallace

We don’t shout here. Please refrain from overuse of the capslock key. Both of you.

Cooke, you are information deficit. If you are, in fact, university educated then please act like it. Gather facts and make a reasoned argument.

Wind is our cheapest way to produce clean new electricity. It’s about the same price as our other cheap generation method, natural gas.

Solar is rapidly dropping in price and will soon be cheaper than NG. Gas prices are rising.

You are going to have a difficult time pointing out the truth when you don’t seem to know the facts. Perhaps you should read more and post less until you catch up.

David Richards

Gas prices are rising and at the height they are now because of taxes more than any other individual thing.

Bob_Wallace

Gas taxes have not been raised for a long time.

The average price of gas in the US is around $3.60/gallon.

Federal gasoline tax is $0.18/gallon.

The average state gasoline tax is $0.31/gallon.

Less that 15 cents of every dollar you spend for gasoline is for taxes.

gcooke777

I have read more than you imagine. The difference is that I objectively discount information when it is based on emotion and not fact. You are predisposed to err on the side of alternative energy sources where as I have no such predisposition. I read that 26 page PDF and again found it based on unsubstatiated projections. Here is a quote from that document:

“Coal-, oil-, and natural gas-fired power plants induce avian deaths at various points throughout their fuel cycle: upstream during coal mining, onsite collision and electrocution with operating plant equipment, and downstream poisoning and death caused by acid rain, mercury pollution, and climate change.” They seem to attribute all avian death from mercury, acid rain, and climate change to fossil fuels. As 96.4% of CO2 is not from petroleum, mercury comes from other sources, and acid rain does as well, that is a big stretch

How can one count bird deaths on climate change when no such study can exist as Climate Change is based on climate models which are currently unproven? Dead birds at a Wind Farm are more directly demonstrable. As history shows changes in the environment, due to complex interactions, are notoriously inncorrect. As an asside when the climate was warmer during the mideval warming period there is no evidence of mass avian death. Besides all that I am not against any type of power that is worthy. Bird death is not my primary concern. The paper you quote was written by a lawyer and not a scientist is concerning to me.

Oil subsidies are a political misnomer. They make up less than 2% at best of the oil companies bottom line and thats if you factor delay in paying taxes, but still paying them, as a handout. From what I can see at a minimum wind power is subsidized at a minimum of 25% of infrastructure. I would appreciate another view on that if you have information that shows that not accurate.

As solar makes up 0.11 percent of American power, cheap or not, it is not at this juncture a part of the power grid to a degree to make it worthy of current discussion. But that being said it is currently at minimum twice as expensive an NG.

I am ready to be convinced by facts but making derrogatory comments about my education, use of caps, and to what degree I am familiar with the discussion will not help you in changing hearts and minds. My education is degree’s in Physics and Mathematics from Cornell, class of 1983.

Petroleum is responsible for the rise of the industrial age and has given us our advanced society as it is currently doing in third world countries. The claim of CO2, climate change, and it’s long term effects are currently so political it is hard to determine truth. I am not a denier per se but I require more evidence especially when the strongest evidence comes from unproven science as espoused by those with a financial motive on both sides. Climate patterns from my study are currently within parameters that can be explained as within the curve of possibility with or without human CO2 emmissions.

As per your request I will not use the caps key but I don’t personally see that as very important as if I was discussing the issue in person those caps would simply be words I emphasize and do not indicate yelling.

One point that needs to be considered is keeping petroleum plants on “standby” as wind power is not continuous. According to Forbes these additional costs are not counted in the equasion and the result dramatically increases the real cost of wind power? How much?

NG 6.3 cents per KWH and wind starts at 8.6 cents per KWH about 15 cents per kilowatt when all expenses are added in like other sources on standby due to winds variable power output. I think that is a partisan report but there is at least some truth in it and it needs to be examined if we are to look at this issue clearly.

“The difference is that I objectively discount information when it is based on emotion and not fact.”

OK, that’s a real poor start. My first inclination is to tell you to shove it.

But I’ll control myself and discuss this with you a bit. I’ve got a very busy week ahead of me and I’m simply not going to address every part of your several comments.

Bird kills – read the research papers. Go to a university and do a forward search and see if those papers have held up in further studies. (I’m not doing your research for you.)

—

“Oil subsidies are a political misnomer. They make up less than 2% at best of the oil companies bottom line”

Oil doesn’t receive a lot in direct subsidies. Of course we have spent several trillion dollars fighting three oil wars.

Wind hasn’t caused any wars and I suspect it won’t.

—

Yes, solar is only 0.11% of our grid total. But everything started at zero and increased. Coal pushed petroleum off the grid. NG has partially pushed coal off the grid.

The cost of NG is rising and will continue to rise, the cost of solar is falling and will continue to fall. They will probably trade places before 2020. The difference right now is about 4 cents per kWh.

—

“Petroleum is responsible for the rise of the industrial age and has given us our advanced society as it is currently doing in third world countries.”

Petroleum and coal.

Horses served us well until we got something better.

—

“I am not a denier per se but I require more evidence especially when the strongest evidence comes from unproven science as espoused by those with a financial motive on both sides. Climate patterns from my study
are currently within parameters that can be explained as within the curve of possibility with or without human CO2 emmissions.”

Smells like denying to me.

—

Standby for renewables is exactly the same as standby for fossil fuel and nuclear. The grid must always be ready and able to deal with changes in supply and demand regardless of how they are caused.

Bob_Wallace

I’ll throw in this – something that I wrote for a different site earlier….

—

How about we start with the EIA’s estimates for new generation placed in service in 2018? That should be a good place since it included LCOE and transmission costs.

So, clearly wind is affordable. It’s the cheapest of all non-carbon generation and the second cheapest after combined cycle natural gas.

Solar doesn’t look so good, but there’s a couple of things to consider.

First, remember that nuclear gets subsidies/assistance/whatever you want to call it. Taxpayer assumed liability, guaranteed loans, and long term storage of nuclear waste.

That number for solar is without any subsidies. (Same for wind.)

Then, the EIA hasn’t done a good job of predicting solar prices. They tend to be fairly conservative. When it was clear to most people that solar was going to come down very fast based on rapidly falling panel prices the EIA seemed to ignore what was happening in the market.

So let’s look at their predicted 14.4 cents/kWh.

Recently the UK completed a large solar array for $1.59/watt. Spain has just started work on one that is expected to cost $1.41/watt. (No subsidies.)

Can you imagine that if Europe can install for around
$1.50/watt in 2013 we won’t be able to get our costs down that low in the US by 2018? Let’s assume we can catch up with Europe in five years.

Using $1.50/watt and the EIA’s 30 year, 6.6% financing and $0.01/kWh O&M cost solar in the not-so-sunny Northeast would pencil out at 8.3 cents per kWh.

In the sunny Southwest it would be 6.7 cents.

And, just for fun, let’s assume installed solar really does get to $1/watt as some are predicting then the cost drops from 6.7 – 8.3/kWh to 4.8 – 5.9/kWh.

Now since there’s no way to start planning a new reactor
today and get it on line for 7 to 12 years a new nuclear would have to compete with wind and solar prices in 2020 or later. Solar is fairly likely to be down to $1/watt installed by 2020 and the EIA predicts that wind will fall at least two more cents, to under 7 cents.

So, what’s your take? Can 14.4 cent nuclear compete with wind and solar well under a dime?

—

Many of our NG wells are dropping output very quickly. Much faster than expected. It’s going to be necessary to drill new wells or re-frack the old ones at a much higher rate than expected to maintain NG supplies.

Current gas prices do not justify new well costs.

The cost of NG is much higher in other countries and NG will be sold on the open market, not reserved for “American use”. US prices will be pulled up by market forces.

The price of NG is going to rise.

Were I a betting person I’d put money on solar being cheaper than NG before 2020.

gcooke777

Those numbers are fanciful and incorrect. Unsubsidized wind vs nuclear are 11 billion for 2 1100gw plants and 8.5 billion for equivilant wind. Nuclear gives power without CO2 like wind, its power output is stable unlike wind, and they dont have to be located where it’s windy!
NG supply is increasing every year. There is no lack of NG at this time and wells are not “drying up” faster than anticipated. Actually annually there is more NG available and not less.

Looey

Those wind turbines as you call them are the biggest monstrosities that I have ever seen. Driving in upstate New York, they are right along the road so you can get an idea of how huge they are. I’ve seen them in the distance but never up close and personal as they are there. Many times they are not even running. No thanks! I don’t want one of them near my house.

Solar is another story. We lived in Florida in the early ’80s and lived in a passive solar house. The panels were for hot water, and they worked well in Florida. Upon returning to the Northeast, we tried to duplicate the house, and no luck. We have had three solar companies look at our current home, and they said the solar would provide only one-third of the electric we needed. We looked at geothermal, but the cost and the electric required to run it was a deciding factor in not putting it in. The payback would have been so long that we will be dead before than happens.

John Farris

Passive solar and solar hot water are things that just about everyone can do. Good bit of info, Looey. Not wanting something to be so does not change it. We can’t use coal forever. IT DOES NOT MATTER IF THE CLIMATE CHANGE PEOPLE ARE CORRECT OR NOT! I love this post by Looey because it points out the challenges, often very regional, of a move away from coal. Here in NH our energy needs are focused more on heat than cooling.
I propose lifestyle change and thoughtful home design as a first step away from fossil fuels. Imagine if new development was responsible for its own power production. I think you would quickly see bermed or earth sheltered homes being built more frequently. We do not have an energy crisis. We have an energy waste problem and a CENTRALIZED energy production problem. If any of you ever get the chance to visit an off grid home similar to what Looey appeared to have in Florida, you realize how much energy is wasted simply by poor orientation of the home in relation to the the sunlight.
I enjoy the banter, even the arguements!

AuAg Finder

Jobs from oil? Visit North Dakota or Texas and you will find the lowest unemployment in the country. The keystone pipeline is a job creator not only for the direct jobs it offers, but because it will impact the global market for petroleum. As the world supply increases, the cost of energy decreases, unemployment goes down, cost of basic items such as food goes down, and the human misery index improves. The blights on the landscape produced by solar and wind we see now are there when we only get a tiny fraction of our energy from them. To achieve the 20% level ONero is demanding will take hundreds more arrays and turbines. I don’t want that, do you?Does anyone?

Bob_Wallace

Let me see if I can figure what I want to see.

Checking for blight….

AuAg Finder

Of course no one wants to see or experience a destroyed landscape. Unfortunately, thousands and thousands of turbines would be required to produce a fraction of the energy fossil fuels can produce. Your solution is not getting rid of those blights. Your efforts would be better spent on mitigating the impact of fossil fuel production.

Bob_Wallace

Have you bother to check the amount of land that would be required to power ourselves with fossil fuels vs. the amount it would take to power ourselves with renewables?

Or did you simply repeat that bit of anti-renewable disinformation?

Bob_Wallace

Here’s something for you to chew on. Renewable energy means that our energy costs will be less once we finish the transition away from fossil fuels.

You man not know it, but coal is incredibly expensive. We spend billions and billions of taxpayer dollars every year to deal with the effect of coal pollution.

Driving on electricity costs about 1/4th as much as driving on petroleum.

Add on the cost of flooding, massive snow storms, droughts and rising sea levels and fossil fuels produce energy too expensive for us to ever afford.

David Richards

Weather always happens has in the past will in the future cant use the chimera of Global warming to justify stupid spending when temperatures have been steady for the last 15yrs.

David Richards

Wind turbines are not free. The wind may be but the turbines as the technology stands rights now take 15yrs or so to even pay for themselves and doesnt count maintenance may be usefull some day but not as it stands now. Solar panels have not even reached 25% efficiency and the older panels are at 2-5% efficiency (is why the solar panel company keep going bankrupt) The technology needs to be developed but it is not good for right now. Obama need to do a real “all of the above” approach. Clean coal and oil needs to stop being demonized. Electric cars are a joke it just changes the place the power is generated.

Bob_Wallace

Wind turbines aren’t free.

But since they have no fuel costs they produce some of the cheapest electricity on our grids.

Yep, Elmo the Obamo. Your record of jobs and govt funded investment in the energy sector is just laughable. But I am sure your sycophants will hungrily take another facial for any utterance which you read off of the teleprompter. Can you make it through one day without spouting a lie or leaning over for Valerie with her strap on? Btw, feeling as I am on a no fly list by your gestapo, I wear it with great honor.

bkhuna

Cut back on Mouchelle’s ski trips and fundraisers. That should prevent a few billion tons of CO2 emission from Air Farce One.

Don

America will return when the Bribe System of Government it put to rest.

Bob_Wallace

We badly need election campaign financing reform.

Don’t look to the Roberts Court. He’s taking things toward giving the rich even more power.

Looey

No, American will return when Obama and the Democrats are out of Washington, and perhaps some of the Republicans, too.

AuAgFinder

If honesty is the best policy, please let the public know that all this “clean” energy will drive up utility bills, the cost of food, the cost of clothing and every other necessity of life. As the basic cost of doing business increases, jobs decrease, human misery increases, there are fewer and fewer employed people to support government handouts and pretty soon we get to experience the “third world” notion of life. A better solution is to use the cheap energy we get from hydrocarbons to improve life all over the planet. And that’s not to mention that supposed “clean” energy is worse for the planet than many forms of hydrocarbons.

http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan

Actually, it drives costs down. Been covered probably a dozen times here on CleanTechnica. Stick around to learn more about it… if you’re not set in your way of thinking and opposed to learning about the biggest energy transition in ages.

Hajjikiller

Horseshit!

AuAgFinder

You have a beautiful way with worded, Hajjikiller, I like your style.

AuAgFinder

That’s great news! If this stuff can be cost competitive then no more corruptocrat subsidies or mandates to pay for votes will be required! I have to laugh every time I see the phrase “end the tax breaks for oil companies”. You notice they never go into details on this. What they are referring to is the simple “cost of goods sold” that every business in the country deducts. They want to eliminate deductions for drilling costs, the cost of dry holes, etc. Whereas for “clean” energy the subsidies are much more direct. Politician: “I will vote to give you a $500 MILLION investment and then you contribute $1 Million of that to the campaigns of me and my friends(Solyndra, et al). Everybody out there, you will be paying for these things with higher prices for cars(mileage mandate), higher prices at the pump(eliminate legitimate business deductions), and higher utility bills(EPA regs). Lower costs are a pipe dream! If not, let them compete in the marketplace. Lower costs will ALWAYS succeed.

Bob_Wallace

At the moment renewables are receiving more subsidies per unit electricity produced than are fossil fuels. But that’s comparing technologies and industries which are a hundred years old vs. emerging technologies which go back only about 30 years.

Over the first 15 years of these energy sources’ subsidies, oil and gas got 5 times what renewables got (in 2010 dollars) and nuclear energy got 10 times as much. (Much of the renewable subsidies went to corn farms.)

Renewables received 92% less per year than oil and gas, 89% less than nuclear and 76% less than biofuels. And for many fewer years.

How have those subsidies paid off? In the last 30 or so years the cost of wind-electricity has dropped from $0.38/kWh to $0.06/kWh. A 6x drop. The price of solar panels has fallen from around $100/watt to just above $0.50/watt. Almost a 200x drop.

As we all know the price of fossil fuels and nuclear just keeps going up. (Aside from a short term drop in the price of natural gas.)

Fossil fuels provide 22 times the energy as wind does. So if we muliply WIND subsidies to compare them to fossil fuels the MATH means PER KILOWATT we would have to subsidize oil with 323 BILLION dollars annually to make it even.

AGAIN that means that WIND is subsidised 80 TIMES as much as oil.

And on the subject of OIL subsidies, what are they exactly?

1. As supply of oil lowers in a given well SMALL oil produers (not Exxon) can depreciate the value of a well and pass it on to consumers. In other words NO CASH to oil, they get to deduct LOSSES like any other business but the CONSUMER pays, NOT the Federal government.. Thats a subsidy? Only in DC.

2. When “Big Oil” creates jobs they get a 6% tax break as job creators. PS all NON oil oil companies get 9 percent so “big oil” QUALIFIES for a tax break by CREATING jobs but gets 50% less than ALL OTHER companies that do the SAME THING!

3. Like YOU they get to deduct from their income taxes paid to others and in the case of “big oil” that INCLUDES foreign companies just like APPLE AND MICROSOFT!

4. And here is a REAL kicker. They get to deduct the cost of things they buy WHEN they buy them so they pay LESS tax in year ONE but MORE tax in year TWO to make up for it. The taxes are STILL PAID, but paid a little slower.

The big expenses? Farmers don’t have to pay road taxes on fuel as tractors usually don’t drive on roads. 1 billion. The government buys 1 billion dollars of oil a year for the strategic oil reserve to protect us from oils shortages. 570 million a year to pay electric bills for the poor is an “oil subsidy” as free energy theoretically drives down the price of oil. Are you KIDDING? Those are 98 percent of oil subsidies.

It’s nice that a person with the motivated self interest of “green energy” likes his company enough to make comments that are factually untrue in order to glorify taxpayer supported energy that in the real world is currently too expensive. You like to place “costs” on hydrocarbons based on unrealistic scenarios and imaginary damage but gloss over the factthat the cost of green energy only SEEMS cheap as it is taxpayer supported. If I were to subsidize OIL and coal to the extent that “green energy” is supported gas would cost 2 dollars a gollan and my electric bill would be cut in half.

Hajjikiller

Don’t burden the morons with the truth. They don’t like it and they don’t get it. They are the New Nanny States of Obamaland. Sounds very African. Obamaland.

Bob_Wallace

Actually, AuAg, we’re on a short path to lower utility bills and cheaper food/goods.

First, if we want to be accurate then we have to include all that goes into our electricity and fuel prices. We, the taxpayers and health insurance purchasers, pay about $1 billion (yes, ‘b’) per day in coal pollution-caused heath problems. And we’ve spent trillions on three oil wars.

It’s not just the subsidies. It the health and military costs that we can avoid by moving away from fossil fuels.

Second, our electricity will be cheaper. At least the price will rise slower. (The price of everything rises with inflation.)

Electricity from wind and solar is cheaper than electricity from new coal and new nuclear plants. Wind is about the same price as electricity from natural gas and solar is getting there.

But. The “levelized cost of electricity” is calculated over a twenty year period. Newest technology wind turbines should last for 30-40 years. Solar panels installed 40 years ago are still producing 80% as much electricity as they did when they were new. That’s a couple of decades of almost free electricity coming our way.

And driving an electric vehicle on 12 cents per kWh electricity costs less than driving a 50 MPG gasmobile on $1.80/gallon gasoline.

What you should be worried about is what we can do to switch to renewables faster.

AuAgFinder

Guess I struck a chord. I’m sure you can’t let a logical comment stand without rebuttal when your whole livelihood depends government subsidies. I only have time for a long reply right now, and who wants to read that, so later this evening I should have an opportunity to respond more succinctly.

Bob_Wallace

No, you showed up and sang an old worn out tune.

Yours is a tune that doesn’t reflect the economics of renewable energy or the history of energy subsidies.

If you’d like to read the rebuttals and engage in a reasoned discussion then you’re welcome. None of us think we have all the answers, but we do try to base our opinions on facts.

I suggest you avoid personal attacks. No one here, as far as I know, receives anything from government subsidies.

Except cheaper, cleaner energy.

dickhead4hundred44

electromagnetic radiation causes cancer. With all these renewable energy sources and vehicles, exposure to cancer causing radiation will skyrocket. We are going from one evil to the next. We need to stop and think about whether developing earth in such a manner, is safe for humans, and we need an international treaty on the matter.

“And because billions of your tax dollars continue to still subsidize
some of the most profitable corporations in the history of the world…” Why is this still happening, how is it even possible?

Bob_Wallace

Because we have not fixed the campaign contribution problem.

anderlan

+100

Matt

And this after all the world gov’s promised to cut it after the first big climate conference.

Hajjikiller

Another new nanny states of obamaland citizen that does not like free speech if it goes against your uninformed “hajjiloving peacepussy occupy “belief” system.

http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan

bcs the rich control our govt, and the rich keep the system benefiting them more than anyone else. fun stuff…

stubbynuggs

So as long as the government is subsidizing industries you like, that’s great, worthy of celebration. But if they subsidize an industry you don’t like, it’s despicable? Get rid of all the subsidies and let them compete.

Hajjikiller

Get rid of the New Nanny States of Obamaland, it’s supporters and it’s despicable “leader”. Jug eared monkey president. Ook Ook EEK!

Bob_Wallace

I can get behind that sentiment. I also believe in fair play.

Since fossil fuels have been receiving subsidies for 100 years, let them go first. And nuclear has been subsidized for 60 years. Cut them loose.

Renewable have received a tiny amount of what fossil fuels and nuclear have received. Fair would be letting renewables keep on receiving subsidies for a few more years. How about five years after fossil fuels and nuclear stop receiving any. Would that be fair?

I’m certain that both the wind and solar industries would be most happy with that deal.

How about working to get subsidies cut for fossil fuels and nuclear?

stubbynuggs

It’s Washington. It’s practically impossible to get them to cut subsidies for anything. We still subsidize sheep farmers because we needed to ensure we had enough wool for military uniforms during the Civil War. We don’t even use wool in military uniforms anymore, yet billionaires can still get a tax break for owning some sheep.

Bob_Wallace

OK, then let’s quit worrying about renewables getting a tiny amount of subsidies (compared to what fossil fuels and nuclear have received) and get on with transforming our grids.

stubbynuggs

Who’s worried? I just pointed out that to cheer subsidies for one industry while decrying subsidies for another is kinda silly. I’d say lets quit worrying about the tiny amount of warming that’s taken place since the 70’s and not waste money on inefficient energy sources.

Bob_Wallace

I suppose if you don’t understand how much the planet has been warming you might not be worried.

However if you knew what was happening…

stubbynuggs

Actually, we don’t know what global temperature has done because there is no reliable way to measure it. Weather stations are notoriously poorly regulated. Many are located too close to urban areas, which are warmer. Many are not kept up properly. I’ve heard many scientists attest to this fact. Take a look at this graph, which shows the climate model predictions against the actual temperature record. Assuming you buy into the false assumption that we can accurately measure average global temperature, those numbers still don’t fall in line with ANY of the predictions.

stubbynuggs

In case you can’t read the data, the dots and squares are the actual temperature record as recorded by satellite and balloon data respectively. The colored lines are all the various climate models. The black line is the average of all the models. This is why I don’t worry.

AuAgFinder

Assuming your data is correct, and forgetting the misleading presentation on the graph by placing your origin at 13.4 units so as to emphasize the last 3 data points, what makes you think this is unusual in the history of the world? I’m sure “Global temperature” collection was completely accurate in years 1881-1930 as you display. In fact, my great-great-grandfather made his living holding thermometers out and measuring temperatures. Although, my grandfather would tell us that most of the time he put his thermometer “where the sun don’t shine”.

Bob_Wallace

There is nothing misleading about the vertical axis. It is clearly labeled.

There is nothing unusual about the Earth heating and cooling. It’s happened before.

What is unusual about this warming spell is how incredibly rapidly the Earth is warming. We have found no times in the history of the planet when temperatures changed to rapidly.

During previous warming periods it would be necessary to greatly shorten the vertical axis range in order to see the increase over only 100 years.

When we look at the known reasons for previous warming periods, things like changes in Earth orbit, solar output, mountain range growth, etc. they happened over thousands of years. This warming is happening a warp speed.

AuAg Finder

Actually, it is very misleading to the casual viewer. Your graph makes it appear that 2001-2010 temps are 3 times what they were in 1900-1910. It takes careful viewing to see that the increase is only a few tenths of a degree. Any true scientist would know that collection of data to show that level of detail worldwide is IMPOSSIBLE! Let alone relying on some very questionable data collection practices for the first 60 years of your graph. This data is trumped up and phony!

Bob_Wallace

Actually our readership is fairly bright. Not the sort of two digit knuckle-draggers you might have encountered on other sites.

And scientists collected and verified that data.

BTW, your grandfather was trying to tell you something. You should have paid attention. One does not collect air temperature by placing the thermometer in sunlight.

There’s a well-established and researched methodology for measuring temperature. You might want to read up on it so you post fewer stupid comments in the future.

AuAg Finder

You’re right, Bob, your readership does seem to be particularly astute, as evidenced by the comments for this article. Other than your friends an relatives, I count no one on this board who believes you are not burying your head in the sand regarding the cost of “clean energy”. Not a knuckle-dragged in the bunch.

Bob_Wallace

Stubby, we aren’t interested in climate change denial here. If you’d like to understand why and how the climate is warming I’d suggest you to to Skeptical Science and get an education.

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